The ball of nerves in the pit of her stomach is as powerful as Austin’s cross-diamond putouts and as potent as Aaron’s first-inning fastballs.

“Full. Time. Baseball. Mom.” her husband, A.J., says emphatically in the couple’s kitchen during an interview this week.

It has been nearly 20 years since Stacie celebrated Mother’s Day without watching America’s pastime. That streak won’t end Sunday.

Stacie Nola will be watching LSU play Alabama at Alex Box Stadium.

She’s used to it by now: baseball for Mother’s Day.

Years ago, when Aaron and Austin were beginning in the sport, her Mother’s Day gift was, literally, a baseball.

“The entire team signed it,” A.J. says, smiling.

Part of the story behind Austin and Aaron Nola’s success is Stacie, a friendly, sociable and baseball-savvy mom who glows when discussing her kids.

“We’re two momma’s boys,” said Austin, four years older than Aaron.

Like many moms, she has made two decades worth of sacrifices for her children.

She has cooked for them and cleaned for them. She has dodged baseballs, pingpong balls, lemons and oranges in her own home.

She has spent her vacations on road trips to baseball tournaments and her holidays in ballparks three states over.

Just recently, she drove to Jackson, Miss., to watch Austin play a minor league game — he’s a shortstop for the Double-A Jacksonville Suns — before driving the next day to College Station, Texas, to watch Aaron pitch against Texas A&M.

A.J. and Stacie say they’ve been to each of Aaron’s 45 starts at LSU. At least one of them was there, too, for every one of Austin’s games.

“It wasn’t easy,” Stacie says while sitting in her living room, her hand stroking the white, fluffy coat of the family’s 8-year-old dog, Max.

Max is a Goldendoodle, a mix between a golden retriever and a poodle. Aaron and Austin grew up with Max around in a two-story, three-bedroom home in a modest Baton Rouge neighborhood just off Highland Road, a few minutes’ walk from LSU’s campus.

A.J. Nola runs his own remodeling and construction company while also coaching baseball. Stacie works as a part-time secretary.

She’s the strict one of the two.

“I’m always the one who had to tell them, ‘No,’ ” Stacie says.

Sometimes it doesn’t always work.

In the fall, when Austin was home during the offseason, him and Aaron played a game of catch with mom’s lemons and oranges in the house. They threw them hard — so hard that the entire home filled with a citrus fragrance.

Her lemons and oranges felt more like sponges after the throwing session.

“She didn’t want us to, but we did it,” Austin Nola said. “She looked a little bit uncomfortable, but we knew deep down she likes watching it.”

They throw baseballs in the house, too. One stands near the kitchen window, the other near the stairs.

It’s a 40- to 50-foot stretch. Baseballs soar halfway across the kitchen, over the dining room table and past a mantle of photos of the boys.